Remembering

This is going to be a bit of a change of pace for me and my usual writings here. As everyone knows, it has been five years since 911 was given a new meaning for all Americans, it's not just the emergency hotline anymore. I wasn't in New York when it happened, nor did I know anyone that died that day. So, I'm not going to say anything about how it impacted my life or how it was a life-altering moment for me. I'll just go through what I remember from it and the days following.

I woke up at 11 am that day, well after the destruction of the towers. My usual routine at that time was to wake up, hop in the shower, turn on the TV to see what kind of weather it was going to be that day (I lived in St. Louis at the time so the weather actually started to cool off, unlike Houston where it's Summer until sometime in December.), then I would grab something to eat and head to class. I try hard to schedule classes in the afternoon since I'm not a morning person. I think it has something to do with how mornings suck something awful. That day I got as far as turning on the TV, sitting on the couch in nothing but a towel, and instantly hearing Tom Brokaw's voice and just a few photos of planes flying into the Twin Towers and then seeing them fall via video footage. Hardly a normal day. I sat there for a while, just listening to what was being said, watching the Towers fall over and over again. I have to admit that it was a bit scary.

I then ran upstairs to see if anyone was home, yes I was still in my towel so I just kind of half-poked my body out from the basement steps to have a look around. Only my mom was there and she was on the phone. I told her what happened, and she already knew of course, but hadn't bothered to clue me in on it as I slept through possibly the biggest tragedy to happen to my generation, other than Bush being president, but I digress.

I couldn't sit around and watch the news very long though, I had a test in 30 minutes or so that I had to get to. I wasn't even sure if we were going to have it due to the events of that morning, but we did. Everyone in the class was talking about it and how they wanted to bomb whoever was responsible back to the stone age with the biggest nuke we had at our disposal. Actually, what they said was a bit more crass and just sounded plain dumb. It was the heat of the moment and they obviously were just having instant reactions to it all. I got over my hatred pretty quickly and just hoped that it wasn't going to happen again somewhere in the US.

After the test I remember driving home and seeing lines of people at gas stations because the oil companies were all ready to turn a profit from a horrible event, much like they would years later with Hurricane Katrina. Luckily Brownie did such a good job to get New Orleans through that one. Oh wait, that didn't happen at all.

The rest of the day and into the next it was eerily quiet. Planes were grounded, people were afraid to leave their homes because of the possibility that they'd be caught in a terrorist attempt as all the other unfortunate folks did in New York, and the only thing on the news were updates on rescue operations and the government not helping us with overcoming our fears but instilling us with new ones.

At the time I'd have liked to have known that in five years time the country would have been able to return to the state of "normal" we had before the attacks, but that's not the case. Bush and Cheney still bring up the fact that we're not safe without having them in office, or one of their peers. Gas prices are still ridiculously over-priced because of the instability that we've created in the Middle East. We never caught the mastermind behind it all and gave up once he entered a mountain range. It's amazing how our government has turned this around to use as a propaganda tool to remain in power and drive the opinion of countries around the world of us down the shitter with our poorly executed war and reasons for it. Fat cats here just keep getting fatter because of it and they line the pockets of politicians so they can continue to do so. It's a sickening cycle that doesn't look like it will come to an end anytime soon.